Sixty-five years after 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi, Congress has approved legislation designating lynching as a hate crime under federal law. The bill, introduced by Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush and named after Till, comes 120 years after Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation and after dozens of similar efforts were defeated. The measure was approved 410 to 4 on Wednesday in the House and now goes to the White House, where President Donald Trump is expected to sign it. The Senate unanimously passed the legislation last year. It designates lynching as a federal hate crime punishable by up to life in prison, a fine, or both. Rush, a Democrat whose Chicago distr
For Immediate Release: Contact Info: February 26, 2020 Mariel Saez 202-225-3130 ORIGINAL SOURCE - https://www.majorityleader.gov/content/hoyer-floor-remarks-emmett-till-antilynching-act WASHINGTON, DC – House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the House Floor today in support of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which passed the House with bipartisan support. Below are excerpts of his remarks and a link to the video. “I am pleased this will be a bipartisan vote. This is about Emmett Till. It's about lynchin
For Immediate Release: Contact Info: February 26, 2020 Mariel Saez 202-225-3130 ORIGINAL SOURCE - https://www.majorityleader.gov/content/hoyer-remarks-press-conference-emmett-till-antilynching-act WASHINGTON, DC – Today, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke at a press conference on H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which is being considered on the House Floor today. He was joined by Representative Bobby L. Rush (IL-01), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), an
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This undated file photo shows Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black Chicago boy, whose body was found in the Tallahatchie River near the Delta community of Money, Miss., Aug. 31, 1955. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — In 1900, 120 years ago this week, the nation’s only black congressman stood on the House floor to read an unprecedented piece of anti-lynching legislation to a roomful of white faces. Just over a year earlier, the congressman, Rep. George Henry White, R-N.C., had witnessed the bloody Wilmington race riot in which mobs of white supremacists overthrew the city’s multiracial government while killing up to 60 black people with impunity. White had engaged in painstaking research, tracki